Japanese government to enforce piracy law on Anime and Manga

In 2012, the Japanese government pushed a new law targeting pirates using file sharing; in this legislation, pirated content distributor are to be punished up to ten years in prison while downloading these contents get you two years jail term. Unfortunately, clamping down on pirates is tricky and time-consuming task; on top of that, most Anime or Manga pirate sites are not based in Japan.

The Japanese government said it would start to act on these violations to protect the publishers of Anime and Manga. An estimated of 580 sites was on the watch list and will soon be contacted by Japanese government officials demanding takedowns of copyright infringing contents. It was reported that most of these sites operate outside Japan and China was one of the primary focus of the initiative.

I doubt any overseas based sites will comply with the takedown request nor will they stop distributing pirated content. In a positive news for consumers, NHK reported that licensed contents are available for purchase at a flat couple hundreds yen (equals to a couple dollars) - of course here at SlashGear we do not condone piracy – so if you love Anime or Manga, support the publishers by buying it legally.